John Lott | All Articles

John Lott

John Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. He is the author of eight books including “More Guns, Less Crime” (University of Chicago Press, 2010, 3rd edition).

Angry that the federal government cut funding to Chicago, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) claimed the Trump administration is contributing to the city’s violence. “So far this year, 3,000 people have been injured by gunshot in the city of Chicago and over 500 have been killed,” Durbin angrily told Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a hearing last week.

The news media wants to tie everything it can to the Charlottesville attack. Wolf Blitzer was worried just a couple of hours after yesterday’s van attack in Barcelona, Spain, which left at least 13 dead and over 100 injured. “There will be questions if what happened in Barcelona was at all, at all a copycat version of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, even though they may be different characters and different political ambitions. They used the same killing device, a vehicle going at high speed into a large group of pedestrians.”

The media is apoplectic that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has criticized the federal judge in Hawaii who suspended President Donald Trump’s revised executive order on visas and refugees. Sessions offending statement? “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the U.S. from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” Sessions said on Tuesday.

Should “military-style rifles” be banned? On Tuesday, the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia – in a virtual party line vote – upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban. In the 10 to 4 En Banc decision, Democrats supported the ban while Republicans opposed it.

At the moment, media outlets want nothing to do with BuzzFeed, the “news” website that published unverified, “fake” allegations against Donald Trump. The allegations are so flimsy that even Trump’s political opponents never used them.

Yet another shooting at yet another gun-free zone occurred today. At this moment 5 people were murdered and another 8 injured. The tragedy today at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is all the more disappointing because just this last year legislators tried to change Florida’s ban on concealed carry at airports to avoid today’s type of event.

On Sunday night, President Obama offered Americans his strategy for protecting them from terrorism. No, he didn’t announce new measures to track down terrorists. Instead, he wants to track down our guns.

On Thursday night, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence honoredHillary Clinton with the first ever Cuomo Visionary Award, named after the late New York Governor Mario Cuomo. The Brady Center gave her the award because “she has demonstrated a clear commitment in support of our efforts to ‘finish the job’” for the gun control and, “there is nobody who has done more to lead us there than Hillary Clinton.”

Last week, a New York Times editorial shockingly claimed that American concealed handgun permit holders have been responsible for 763 non-self-defense deaths since 2007. The Times editorial cites these numbers as proof of the “myth of the vigilant citizen” and “foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance.”

Democrats keeping telling people that they don’t want to confiscate their guns, but at the same time they are praising the gun control laws in countries that have confiscated people’s guns. But Hillary Clinton's claims that confiscation made them safer are completely wrong.

President Obama still hasn’t learned his lesson. He has spoken out yet again before the facts were in. In this case, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, who was arrested and suspended for bringing an electronic clock to school, was invited to the White House within hours of his story going viral. Obama suggested the visit was to “inspire more kids like you to like science.” Many think it "obvious" the school boy's religion had played a role in his arrest.

An 11-year-old boy shoots an almost 17-year-old who had broken into his home, saving his 4-year-old sister and scaring away another burglar. The burglars repeatedly tried to break into the home, finally succeeding on their third attempt.

Normally, even the New York Times doesn’t cite such an unreliable source as Mother Jones for evidence.But when it comes to gun control, it’s considered okay to use biased sources, call people names, and thoughtlessly dismiss the notion that gun-free zones endanger lives.